She wasn’t supposed to be there. She hadn’t hit her quota of matches this month, and she wasn’t going to help make that number at a Spice Girls concert. No one was looking for love at a Spice Girls concert.
But that was what Maurelle wanted to make her specialty.
Helping people find love when they least expected it.
(Not to mention, Maurelle loved the Spice Girls, and was slamming it to the left and shaking it to the right, spicing up her life right that very moment as proof.)
She was still in match training. Though recently she’d been let off on her own. But she still had to give a full report on her activities after each match she made, unlike the fairies who had hit age eighteen, graduated from Match Academy, and were really off on their own, given Free Wing, making matches willy-nilly.
At sixteen (in fairy years, which was eighty in human years), she had ambitions.
Maurelle was going to be the best there was at helping folks find love in the unlikeliest of places.
Like at a Spice Girl concert.
The Elder Fairies were fans of this.
What they weren’t fans of were some of Maurelle’s tactics. She’d had to go in front of a Gathering to explain herself on more than one occasion (like . . . nineteen of them, okay, maybe twenty, or . . . ahem, twenty-four).
But it was easy to do the meet-cute. Cause the girl to trip and fall into the guy. Send the guy’s new puppy running off in the girl’s direction. A wayward Frisbee. The perfect placement of the splat of a scoop of ice cream from a cone. Sending a gust of wind to hit just right on a floppy hat.
Maurelle liked a challenge.
Maurelle liked to spark love in unlikely places . . .
To unlikely people.
So she was floating and dancing (and singing).
She was also keeping an eye out.
And because she was, she saw him.
No, she saw her first.
But that her was staring straight at him.
And really, Maurelle thought, she couldn’t blame her.
There was a lot of him to look at and all of it was good.
He was close to the front, his arm slung around a pretty girl who he barely could keep hold on, she was bouncing and dancing so much.
He was tall.
He was broad.
He was handsome.
And the woman watching . . .
Maurelle stopped dancing and honed in on the woman gazing at the man.
Specifically, the look of longing on her face.
“Tell me what you want,” Maurelle whispered into the air, “what you really, really want.”
Just as she did, the woman’s face fell and Maurelle looked back to the man.
He’d dipped his head and was talking into the ear of the girl he was holding. Maurelle could see from his profile he had a smile on his face.
He was not happy to be at a Spice Girls concert (this Maurelle knew by pure instinct, and this instinct had a lot to do with the fact he was more than a little rugged and he was wearing faded jeans and a plaid shirt that was very nice, but it wasn’t tailored or designer to the point if she caught it, it might make Posh swoon).
He was just happy that she was happy.
Maurelle looked back to the woman across the way in time to see her rush from her row of dancing, sing-shouting Spice Girls fans to the aisle.
And then she lumbered down the aisle.
Yes, lumbered.
There was something wrong with her leg.
Like . . . really wrong.
“Oh dear,” Maurelle murmured into Sporty Spice belting it out.
She didn’t know what Maurelle knew from just looking at the man’s demeanor and the kind of hold he had on the lady at his side, knowing this from having been discerning this kind of thing for a long time (in human years).
The lady the man was with was his sister.
At this point Maurelle knew the drill (she’d taken two whole classes on it, not to mention two fairy years of practical).
She should spend some time observing the both of them. Use some of her magic to become invisible and get closer to listen and learn about these two people before she made any moves.
But Maurelle saw the look on that woman’s face (actually, she’d seen both looks).
And she saw the man had let his sister go in order to let her fully get into the song, but he still had a dashingly handsome smile on his face, happy his sister was having a good time even though his top choice would not be entering Spice World . . .
And Maurelle turned her gaze to the woman making her awkward way down the aisle and Maurelle knew, she just knew in her head that woman had convinced herself a tall, broad, handsome man, who was the kind of man who didn’t have a problem showing how much he loved his sister (even though she didn’t know she was his sister), would never be for her.
Maybe, with that limp, she wasn’t sure she’d ever find a man who would be for her.
“That does it,” Maurelle decided as she wound her arm up high, kicked out a hip, did her patented disco stance (well, it wasn’t patented yet, but she was going to patent it with the Fairy Patent Board after she was given Free Wing) and she let fly.
An aqua, hot-pink and violet stream of twinkling fairy dust shot down and slammed right between the shoulder blades of the man.
Those around him who caught it oo’d and ah’d, thinking it was a part of the show, looking around to see if they could spot more such displays of bodaciousness, and Maurelle bit her lip.
Doing things like that, the Elder Fairies didn’t like all that much.
Maurelle drifted deeper into the rafters, waited and watched as the man suddenly leaned into his sister and spoke in her ear.
She looked up at him, nodded, and he moved, causing quite a sensation and taking some attention from the show so the women he squeezed in front of could watch him go.
He started down the aisle and Maurelle moved with him overhead, out of eyesight, and only dipped down to buzz the top of the entrance out into the concourse at the last minute.
He thought he was heading to the bathroom, she knew.
And he started heading that way, she saw.
But his eyes caught on the woman leaning a shoulder to the wall, her back to him, her head bent.
Her shoulders were lightly shaking.
And it was clear she wasn’t laughing.
Oh boy.
It was worse than Maurelle thought.
He hesitated (Maurelle just knew he would).
Then he started heading her way (something else Maurelle just knew he would do).
When he did, she started to smile.
This was going to be easy!
Just one of Maurelle’s Patented (soon) Disco Fairy Blasts and . . .
Boom!
“Maurelle,” she heard hissed, and her head flashed to the side, glimmer flying everywhere, to see Nissa there.
Nissa was her friend. Before they let her out on her own, Nissa had been her hands-on mentor and Nissa had always been at her side when she’d made her first matches, guiding her through amusing misunderstandings when a hostess called names of parties waiting for tables at a restaurant, or two people reached for the same carton of eggs at the exact same time at a grocery store.
Nissa was still her mentor, always there when Maurelle gave her reports.
Nissa was a whole twenty-six fairy years old (her birthday was just five fairy days before (that would be fifteen human days)), had graduated Salutatorian at the Match Academy, and thus had had Free Wing for eight years.
Nissa always hit her quotas, and then some, doing it right smack in the rules.
Ice cream scoops falling.
Wayward Frisbees.
Tumbling floppy hats.
Kites stuck in trees.
Puppies galore.
And rambunctious kittens who somehow got loose at rescue centers?
Forget about it.